


The Meek Have Nothing To Do With It

by KathSilver



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brace yourselves, Canon-Typical Violence, Coda, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, Hold on to your hats kiddies, I Don't Even Know, I'm writing this shit anyway, Listen fuck this I can't do it, M/M, No Beta We Die Like Angels, No I don't care what happens next week, Post 15x19, Post-Episode: s15e19 Inherit the Earth, Protective Dean Winchester, Use your words dean, i'll just add tags as I go okay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:20:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27538237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KathSilver/pseuds/KathSilver
Summary: They won, technically. But somehow winning felt a little too empty, a little too unfinished.What is Dean supposed to do in a world where he is free to choose the life he wants... but the only life he's ever known is the one he's supposed to walk away from, and the only other choice he would realistically make was nowhere to be found?Or: Somewhere along the way, Dean Winchester learned how to have a little faith.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester
Comments: 19
Kudos: 88





	1. The Road So Far

**Author's Note:**

> Sup clowns. Am I early in posting a fix-it fic when the finale hasn't aired yet? Yes. Is it still possible that the finale will be something that makes this fic irrelevant and is SO MUCH BETTER? Also yes.
> 
> Am I writing it anyway?
> 
> You betcha!
> 
> Nothing fuels my writing frenzy more than killing half of my OTP and then giving them a crappy ending, and there is so much that went wrong in the way 15x19 ended that I can't just... not. 
> 
> So, here we go. From here on out the chapters will be longer, just think of this little bit as a prologue, the real story will pick up soon. Knowing me, I'll probably end up posting daily because I am fucking feral and frothing at the mouth right now.
> 
> Love you!

“To those we lost along the way.”

The clink of the bottles felt a little empty, the liquid too dry on his tongue, but he still meant the sentiment. Dean could still feel the ache in his fingers from carving the names into the table, names that he wasn’t too sure what to do with, except for knowing they belonged there.

Had belonged there for a while, actually, but doing before now... it felt too much like tempting fate. Now he only wished that they could have seen it.

Sam’s phone dinged from where it sat on the table in question, and how quickly his brother moved to answer it told Dean who it must be.

“Eileen doin’ okay?” He asked.

“Yeah, she’s finishing up at work. Should be home by the time we get there.”

“Good! We’ll go grab her and then head to Bobby’s. Big celebration awaits!”

Dean winced at the flat enthusiasm in his voice; he used to be so much better at faking, but that was a whole angel and a handful of deaths ago.

“Dean…”

Here it comes.

“What’s up, Sammy? Not havin’ second thoughts about your girl there, are you? Bit late in the game for that.”

He deserved the bitch face, he knew he did, but false bravado was all he had left at this point and he’d be damned (again) before he gave it up.

“Why didn’t you ask him?”

“Ask who, what?”

Don’t go there, Sam. He wasn’t ready. Don’t do it.

“Why didn’t you ask Jack to bring him back?”

He did it.

Dean took another hollow swig of beer to finish it off, threw the bottle towards the trash can, and stood up. He brushed away the emotions he could feel bubbling to the surface and plastered a smirk on his face.

“Time to go, Sammy. Don’t wanna keep your girlfriend waitin’.”

“Dean—“

Dean sighed and shoved his hands in his pockets to grab for his keys so that Sam wouldn’t see the way they trembled. He wasn’t ready to talk about it, wasn’t sure he would ever be ready to talk about it, and no amount of pushing from Sam would change that. He needed time, he needed sleep. He needed to somehow find a way to come to grips with the fact that Cas had—

He needed to drive.

“Don’t make me leave without you, Sammy. I’ll do it.”

Sam’s disappointed sigh hit Dean’s back as he walked away, but considering the footsteps that followed he still counted it as a win.

If his eyes lingered a little too long on the names freshly carved into solid oak on his way out?

That was nobody’s business but his own.

Leather, gun oil, and the hum of the engine.

Sam was silent in the passenger seat, hadn’t spoken a word since they’d left the bunker, but the tension in his shoulders spoke for him. Sam wanted to push, to drag everything out of him bit by bit so that he understood.

And that was without Dean even telling the whole story of how it all went down. It was only a matter of time before Sam would think to ask how Cas had even summoned The Empty in the first place, and Dean still didn’t have an answer that he felt like he could give.

He’d hoped, of course, that Jack would snap his fingers and Castiel would appear before them. He’d hoped that his phone would ring, and that this time it wouldn’t be a sadistic God pulling the strings for his own amusement. He’d hoped for a miracle.

But he couldn’t ask for one.

“He’s our kid, Sam.”

Dean’s voice broke the silence before his brain understood that he was speaking; he took no satisfaction from the way Sam jumped a little, because he was already panicking his own damn self. Now that he’d spoken, Dean wasn’t sure if he’d be able to keep going, didn’t even know how to explain the rest of the answer that his mouth apparently wanted to give.

Dean’s hands tightened on the warm steering wheel, drew strength from the feel of the road buzzing underneath his fingers. And Sam stayed silent, stayed staring out the window, only the shift of tension in his body to let Dean know he was listening.

Dean cleared his throat and kept his eyes resolutely on the curve of the double-yellow line before him.

“I wasn’t good to him, at first. I own that. But he’s still my kid. Our kid.” The words felt like chalk on his tongue, harder than walking through mud to force out. “He’s been through too much, had to take on too much. Had to clean up one too many of our messes. Said he wanted to be hands off, and that’s fine, that’s his right, kid’s had a burden on his shoulders since before he was born, I won’t begrudge him that. I’m not gonna be like Dad, Sam, and ask him to take on another burden for me. Not gonna have him clean up my own mess.”

It didn’t make a whole lot of sense, he knew it, but that was the best way Dean could explain it. He’d almost done it, almost called out when Jack had turned away, almost asked for the favor. But.

_Dad’s on a hunting trip, and he hasn’t been home for a few days._

John Winchester had done a number on him. Dean knew it, Sam knew it. Heaven and Hell knew it at this point and they’d often even banked on it. He’d trained Dean to do his job, shaped his life by passing on the hunt for ol’ yellow eyes, had time and time again leaned on Dean to clean up a mess the adults had made.

He wouldn’t do the same, not if he could help it.

“But…” Sam broke his silence and turned from facing out the window to facing the road ahead. “How was losing Castiel _your_ mess?”

Dean clenched his jaw, turned on the music, and didn’t answer.


	2. End of an Era

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean comes to terms with expectations and certain realities that others aren't ready to face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiya! Sorry for the delay, I know I said likely daily updates but I wanted to wait for Jensen's panel to see if he had anything I could use. Hoooo boy was I right to wait!
> 
> Let's get this show on the road.

The screen door slammed behind him but Dean paid it no mind. The long stride to the porch railing and the breath of fresh air that filled his lungs before he actually climbed out of his own skin felt far more important than any sort of dramatic exit.

No one was watching him anyway, the loud group inside too intent to celebrate their continued existence to pay too much attention to the person hiding in the shadows. The only person even slightly on his level was Claire, but she stuck close to Alex and for the most part hid her confusion on why the absence of an Angel in her father’s skin didn’t sit right with her.

Dean didn’t blame her, the whole situation was fucked, and to be honest he was selfishly glad that he wasn’t the only person thinking about it.

Because he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Every time he closed his eyes, even just for a blink, he could see Cas’ face: tears falling down electric blue eyes, smile blinding with its surety. Words spilling from lips that had haunted Dean for years, words that he didn’t know if he could even believe.

How human was human enough to feel?

Dean leaned forward and gripped the worn wood of the porch railing until the edges cut his palms and gave him something to focus on, but it didn’t work.

_I love you_

What was love to a being that had lived for millennia? That had seen the rise and fall (and fall… and fall… and fall…) of the world, that had witnessed every act of humanity countless times over again? Anna had told Dean over a decade ago that it wasn’t until she’d lost her Grace and become fully human that she’d known how to feel, but where was that line drawn?

Cas had fallen, more than once, had lost his Grace and become human completely for a time before getting it back. Was that short time as a human enough? Part of him felt like the answer had to be no because there was no way, none, that it was possible for a goddamn _Angel_ to possibly look at Dean and see something worth loving.

The other part of him knew that thinking like that wasn’t giving Cas enough credit and was a betrayal of its own.

“Dean?”

Dean let loose a long breath and forced his fingers to open; he didn’t bother to shake out the feel of the cutting edge against his palm. The longer it stayed, the better.

“What’s up, Sammy?” He turned to find Sam leaning against the closed screen, two beers in hand, and a look on his face that meant he’d been standing there for longer that Dean knew. The smile he’d tried to put on for show melted right off his face, and he turned again to face the woods.

Footsteps approached and it was nothing to accept the offered beer and take a swig, let the silence do the talking for as long as his brother would let it.

“You weren’t inside.”

Dean pointed a finger at him, “Good eyes, Poindexter.”

Sam gave him the side-eye, but he shrugged it off. If he’d wanted conversation he wouldn’t have come outside to be alone, and something told him that Sam wouldn’t be happy about what was going on inside his head if he knew.

“What’s on your mind?”

“Don’t worry about it, Sammy. You don’t wanna know.”

Sam sighed, “If I didn’t want to know, I wouldn’t have asked. C’mon Dean, don’t do this.”

He felt the hair raise against his skin, the anger thrum beneath it, but fought to keep it down. He wasn’t that person, didn’t have to be that person, and he could get through a conversation without snapping at Sam. “Trust me, you really don’t. You want to go inside, be happy with Eileen, ease your way out of the life and put this all behind you, somehow. Raise a family, get a real job. Be happy.”

He now had Sam’s complete and undivided attention so, naturally, he stopped talking and took a long drag from his bottle. He could feel Sam’s indecision mounting but already knew which way the shoe would drop. Sam just couldn’t mind his own damn business, never could.

“And you don’t?”

“Don’t what? Want to raise a family with Eileen? Nah, Sam, sorry to say it but she’s not really my type.”

He shrugged out of the shoulder-punch with ease, the rhythm of their interactions easy to fall into, get lost in. He knew Sam wouldn’t drop it but he sure as hell wasn’t gonna make it easy for him.

“Seriously, man. You don’t want to walk away?” Sam asked, and the desperation hiding in his voice made Dean, for a moment, wish that he could want it. If only for Sam, he wished he could want it. He wet his lips with beer before setting down the bottle and crossing his arms. The beam behind him wasn’t comfortable, but it was sturdy and it held his weight well.

“I’m 41 year’s old, Sam. I never went to college, I dropped out of high school, and my list of talents isn’t something that can lend itself to any kind of real work that could support a life. Chuck might not be controlling us anymore, so in the grand scheme of life, the universe, and everything I’m free to choose. But in reality? I don’t really have a lot of options open to me. No prospects, and I mean that in every sense of the word.” A sharp pang to the chest rang through at that, the idea of a romantic prospect, but he’d been shutting down that idea for years now. Realistically Dean knew he could stop his explanation there, could let that be the end of it, but just like in the car his mouth kept moving without his permission. “And more than that… I still have questions. Job doesn’t feel done.”

Dean risked a glance at Sam to gauge his reaction and found him staring off to the side, bottle to his lips. He almost mirrored the action, but his fingers had begun to shake and keeping them hidden beneath his arms was safer.

Waiting for Sam to speak felt like waiting for judgement, and he hated it.

“Questions?” Sam finally asked. Dean didn’t know whether or not he was relieved.

It’s not like Sam had a real argument for Dean’s other points; sure, they could fake papers to give Dean credentials for whatever job he’d want to go for, but then he’d still have to _do_ it, and they both knew that no matter where he went, Dean’s eyes would still be drawn to the darkness. On the other hand, his questions were possibly more revealing than he wanted them to be.

“The Empty,” Dean stopped and raised his eyebrows when Sam sucked in a breath. But Sam closed his mouth and motioned for Dean to keep talking. “It was pissed before, right? Cas—” His voice broke a little on the name, but Dean powered through and willed Sam to let it go. “He said originally that he annoyed it into letting him go, ‘cause he was loud, right? Then Billie sends Jack in there to explode, and Jack says that the Empty was losing it’s damn mind ‘cause Jack made it loud. In theory, that means because he woke everyone up.”

Dean paused to check in with Sam, see if he was on the same page, and he was nodding.

“So, if one person was able to annoy The Empty enough to letting them out, what’s gonna happen when they’re _all_ awake? And now we’ve got this ‘ancient cosmic entity’ pissed off, and it can’t lash out at Jack, so who else does that leave?”

“But Billie also said that The Empty couldn’t come to Earth unless summoned, right?” Sam clarifies, and at the word ‘summon’ Dean felt himself tense up. “So, unless someone summons it, it can’t do anything, right? Is it easy to summon?”

As easy as being happy. “I dunno.”

“But you said Cas summoned it before, so—”

“I dunno how easy it is to summon, but we also know it makes deals with people to let them out, so—”

“Wait, what? We do?”

Shit.

“Yeah, we do. So, if it’s got every dead Demon and Angel tucked away inside it, all awake and annoying, what’s to stop it from making deals to release them to come after those who made it loud in the first place? And if it can’t find them, their associates?” Dean explained, losing himself to the only other train of thought he’d been able to bear thinking about.

“I’m gonna need you to take a few steps back here, Dean. What’s this about deals? Is that…” Sam’s forehead scrunched when he put his thinking face on, and Dean decided that shaking fingers or not, he needed that beer.

Give him enough time, Sam would figure it out.

“Dean?”

Dean closed his eyes against the incoming questions, like if he couldn’t see them then they weren’t real. But that logic didn’t apply to the monster under the bed, so why would it work now?

“Did Cas make a deal with The Empty when he got out?”

A nod was all he was willing to give.

“How did he summon it, then?”

“It doesn’t matter, just know that it can happen, alright? So either this Empty is gonna turn benevolent and not do anything at all—which I doubt ‘cause this thing is one twisted fuck, or at the very least we’re gonna have an influx of things that go bump in the night, many of which have some pretty good reasons to hate us.”

Sam placed his arms on the railing and leaning down, blowing out a breath as he did it. “If you don’t tell me everything, how am I supposed to help?”

Dean shook his head and ground his teeth; his empty bottle no longer able to let him stall. Instead he sighs and lays it out there. “You’re not, Sam. Not this time. You’re gonna go back inside with your girl and be free. And I’m gonna figure out what happens next.”

Dean hadn’t been solo, truly solo, in fifteen years. He wasn’t sure he knew how to do it anymore, not really. But he’d figure it out. Had to. Sam had tried to get out of this life once before and Dean had drawn him back in against his will and kept him there.

_Dad’s on a hunting trip, and he hasn’t been home in a few days._

Crazy how everything that mattered in his whole, sorry life came down to that once sentence. For better or for worse it had been what defined him for too damn long, but not anymore. Chuck had set Sam free, and now it was Dean’s turn to do the same.

“Dean, listen. You can’t do this alone. I’ll talk to Eileen, she’ll understand, but you do this thing where you just… Are you sure you’re not just looking for trouble?”

Dean knew what Sam was talking about, the subject the two of them were dancing around. The way that whenever he lost Cas, he also lost control over himself, lost his will to go on. When looking for the end however he could find it. But this time he could honestly say that wasn’t the case. He wasn’t looking for trouble, he was looking for answers.

“Nah, not this time. We got a win, remember? Pretty big one. That’s not what this is, and you’re not comin’ with me. I gotta figure some things out, both with myself and with The Empty. Gotta make sure that things are actually as good as they seem, you know?”

Things would never be as good as them seemed, he knew that. Sam knew that. Dean could go a decade of peace and still feel the need to ward everything, to scout out the dark, to go bump first before anything else could. He may have acknowledged that a killer wasn’t who he was ~~wasn’t who Cas had thought he was, and that was what mattered, right?~~ But that didn’t mean he wasn’t shaped by it.

That in the silence he still didn’t hear hells screams, and now without a buffer of wings to shield him from it.

“I’ll come with you, Dean, I—”

“Sam?”

Both men turned to the doorway to face Eileen. She looked great; Dean had to admit. Most relaxed he had ever seen her, though as she read the air on the porch, he saw the uncertainty fill her eyes. Dean offered her a soft smile and nodded for Sam to go with her.

“Go, man. You’ve got your girl waitin’ for ya.”

The smile Dean gave Sam was just as genuine, and Sam obviously didn’t know what to do with it. A sad reality of his existence: Dean Winchester smiling was enough to cause suspicion.

“Will you still be here if I do?” Sam asked, feet shuffling torn as he was between the paths lain out before him.

Dean shook his head, at least he was honest, but “I’ll call, Sam. And if I need backup, I won’t be stupid, alright? I promise. No go.”

The hug was easy to accept, easy to return, easy to get lost in.

Hard to leave.

This was it, the moment the Winchester boys willingly separated on their own terms. The end of a goddamn era where brotherhood was oftentimes the only thing they had left. He held the tears back until the screen door closed behind Sam and Eileen and he’d turned away.

It took a few moments for him to catch his breath, to force his leaden legs down the stairs and over the gravel to Baby. At the driver’s side door, he paused, and doubted.

Was this the right thing to do? Jack may have decided to be hands off, but he wouldn’t have left them in any real danger, right? And should he leave Sam behind? It’s supposed to be them, the two of them, through Heaven or Hell or come what may, two brothers against the world.

_This is your problem, Dean. You have no faith._

Right.

He’d learned a thing or two about Faith and Doubt over the years, and while he still wasn’t sure he’d ever get it right…

Let it be known that Dean Winchester opened the door to the Impala, turned the key in the ignition, and drove.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like it should be said that I've never written for this fandom before, and I'm nervous as all hell about it. For the record. I've been a fan for 15 years but never felt the need to write my own stuff until all of this went down, so go easy on me. That said, I accept kind criticism, so if I'm messing shit up just let me know.


End file.
